


Let the Water Take Me

by XaviaAndromedovna



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Body Dysphoria, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Monster of the Week, Trans Female Character, Trans!Stiles, mentions of past Sterek, mermaid!stiles, stereotypical sleepover fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:24:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4431656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaviaAndromedovna/pseuds/XaviaAndromedovna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles pisses off some mermaids and might be turning into one? At least her girlfriend is there to piece her back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Water Take Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlphaFeels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaFeels/gifts).



> This fic was written as part of Round 3 of Teen Wolf Reverse Bang on Livejournal and is inspired by witchaphe's art, which can be found [here](http://witchaphe.tumblr.com/post/125137070229/another-piece-for-the-teen-wolf-reverse-bang). Obvi I don't own Teen Wolf or everyone would be trans. Many thanks once again to Jake for betaing.

Stiles rips off her goggles and earplugs and collapses on the lake’s edge. Her leg is bleeding pretty profusely and there’ll be a nasty bruise on her right side come morning, but she’s alive.

“Lydia’s gonna kill me,” she huffs before pulling herself up and into her Jeep.

~~~

“I’m gonna kill you,” Lydia glares as she opens her door and hands Stiles a towel. Stiles doesn’t respond as she dries off, knowing that what she did was, in Lydia’s words, “incredibly stupid, what the hell were you thinking! Stiles, you have an entire pack of shapeshifters at your disposal and you invade a school of mermaids by yourself? Do you have a death wish?!”

“Well it can’t be that strong of a death wish if I’m _not dead_ , okay, I think that’s a very important thing to note.”

Lydia’s irate pout is sufficient to guess her opinions on that. “March,” she barks, pointing upstairs in the terrifying manner Stiles fell in love with in the first place.

“Y’okay,” Stiles concedes sheepishly. Her progress is slow but Lydia is right behind her, keeping her steady even as she mutters under her breath. She guides her into the bathroom and draws a bath. Honestly, Stiles wasn’t paying attention when Deaton explained the herbs and potions Lydia pours into the tub, but she trusts her girlfriend of ten months to do it right; after all, it’s just chemistry with more fairy dust.

“C’mon, strip,” Lydia commands. “I need to dress your wounds. And next time we go shopping we’re getting you an actual bathing suit so you can ditch the swim trunks.”

Stiles freezes. She _definitely_ did not think this one through. Stiles hasn’t changed in front of someone since she quit lacrosse. (Coach would’ve let her keep playing after she came out as trans, but her heart wasn’t in the game, just the pretense at masculinity.) Now’s not exactly the best time for her insecurities to get the best of her. “Yeah, ummm, stripping, that’s, uh, something I should do. Now. Just, taking off my clothes, no big deal…”

Lydia shoots her an all-too-familiar eyebrow raise. “Are you okay?” She must sense that this is more serious than Stiles’s usual stall tactics, because her expression changes from one of annoyance to one of concern. “Did something happen?”

Stiles sits on the floor and leans against the tub, Lydia sitting down next to her. “No, it’s not that, it’s just…” She’s unsure how to explain it; she’s never really talked about her dysphoria before, and she’s not convinced Lydia would understand. Compared to other trans girls she’s met, her dysphoria is relatively mild, but this is still uncharted territory for them. They’ve been content with making out and the occasional boob grab for a while; full frontal is not exactly next on the list.

It’s the way Lydia stays silent that draws it out of her, searching eyes meeting hers with confused support. “I don’t think I’m ready for you to see me naked just yet. Like, there are some mysteries we don’t have to solve right away, right? And I mean, it’s not that I don’t—“

Lydia plants a kiss on her nose and gets up from the floor. That shuts her up every time. “I understand. All I need to see is your wounds.” Stiles lets out a sigh of relief before moving to sit backwards on the toilet seat.

“Thanks.” Lifting her arms is harder than anticipated, drawing out a frustrated hiss of pain. “Can you help me get this off? Most of my scratches are on my back.” Lydia helps her out of her top and sucks in a breath. “How bad is it?” Stiles asks, turning her head to get a better look.

Lydia grabs a washcloth, dips it in the bath, and tries to find the source of the bleeding on her leg. “Honestly I’m more concerned about what happened back here. How the hell were you able to walk on this?”

Stiles snorts coldly. “I didn’t, I crawled.” She feels Lydia still, and is perfectly aware she’s glaring daggers at the back of her head. “Yeah, yeah, kill me later.”

”This isn’t funny, Stiles. You could have died. You’re not even the heroic type, what made you think this was a good idea?”

“Well Derek was being an asshole—“

“Shocker…” Lydia has made her opinions on Stiles’s ex-boyfriend abundantly clear.

“ _Anyway_ , so you know how we figured out the sirens had the totem? Well I was trying to get Derek to tell me more about the sirens and he kept shooting down my ideas because apparently there’s all these politics involved in meeting with them and we needed Deaton because magic and whatever but he’s still not back yet and I just got fed up and went down there myself. The mermaid history book said all I needed to do was replace the totem with an object of personal significance and I should have been golden. But then I may or may not have offended the mermaid queen? I don’t know, it happened pretty fast.”

“Of course you pissed off the mermaid queen. That’s exactly what we needed.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I get it, it was really fucking stupid. What did you expect? I saw a chance, I took it.”

“ We have a protocol for a reason. Why would you do that?”

Stiles winces as Lydia applies a poultice to the wounds. “Okay, if we just barged in with our werewolf snorkels we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. We needed someone to sneak in and if you knew what I was planning you’d’ve tried to stop me.”

“Of course I would’ve tried to stop you! That’s the entire point of having a protocol, which was your idea in the first place, by the way.”

“Yeah, well obviously not all my ideas are brilliant.” Stiles rubs a hand across her tired eyes and huffs out an “I’m sorry.” Lydia plants a kiss on her shoulder and turns off the water.

“Did you at least get it?” Stiles nods and hands her the totem. Its iridescent shimmer draws a reverent hum from Lydia’s lips. She places it on the counter. “What did you trade for it?” Stiles looks at the ground, chagrinned.

“The bracelet you bought me…?” Lydia stares at her in disbelief. “It had to be something I’d miss, otherwise it wouldn’t have worked.”

Lydia clicks her jaw shut and stands up with the tense calm only the angry can manage. “I think you can handle the front. I’ll be in my room.” And with a slam of the bathroom door, Stiles is alone with a bowl of sticky yellow stuff and a knot in her throat.

She unclasps her bra and begins cleaning the wounds along her chest, wishing she could explain to the woman she loves why she had to do things this way. The totem is the only thing that can release Kira from the witch’s curse, and if they waited around for diplomacy or brute force to work against the mermaids, Kira would still be a metal statue into next century. She glares at the shining figurine on the counter. “You better be freaking worth it.”

After the sting of the last of the poultice subsides, she submerges herself in the bath water. She knows she’s supposed to relax, but her first priority is to get the seaweed and purple gunk out of her hair. Ever since she started growing it out senior year of high school, Lydia has been hounding her about proper hair care, and whatever this mess is, there’s no way it’s a good idea to leave it in for long. When the majority of the goo is out, she stills and tries to focus on the healing energy of the water. She doesn’t submerge her face, though; the feeling is a little too similar to the first time she died. “Just relax, Stiles,” she coaches. “Relax…”

Her leg starts itching a few minutes later, but she assumes it’s just the poultice running its course. After fifteen minutes of desperately trying not to scratch, the feeling that the itch is spreading causes her to open her eyes. She was not expecting to find scales stitching their way across her skin.

“LYDIA?!” she screams. The goo is clinging to her upper body and her hair seems to have secreted a fresh coating of it. She tries to move her legs but they’re joined at the ankle. “Lydia, we have a problem!”

Lydia bursts into the bathroom with a baseball bat and a pissed-off glare. The bat clatters to the ground when she sees the current state of Stiles’s body. “What…” she whispers. They stare at each other, petrified in the knowledge that Stiles has really stepped in it this time.

~~~

They aren’t sure if Stiles is permanently sea-faring or if she’s a shifter like the others, but her new tail doesn’t fit in the bathtub and she’s afraid to air out the gills that have appeared on her neck. Lydia grabs the totem off the counter and tells her she’ll be back. When she gets to her car, she calls Scott and begins the frantic drive to the lacrosse field (always the god-damned lacrosse field).

“Hey, Lydia, what’s up?”

“Stiles is a mermaid and I have the totem. Get everyone to meet me at the bleachers. ”

“Wait, what?!” She hangs up on him, not in the mood to explain things over the phone. Lydia loves Stiles to pieces, she really does. But sometimes her girlfriend is a magnet for trouble. They’ve been dealing with supernatural bullshit for five years now and she still feels the need to insert herself where she doesn’t need to be. She should just leave the dangerous stuff to her and the shifters.

Except now she’s supernatural herself. Again. Lydia can already tell Stiles is not going to adjust to that very smoothly, given what happened last time she wasn’t human. And if she’s stuck in that form for good? Well, they’ll figure it out; they always do. Lydia could probably rig up some sort of transport system for when Stiles needs to be on land or moved— which is soon seeing as she’s still stuck in Lydia’s bathroom. “God damn it, Stiles,” she mutters to herself.

She’s the first to arrive at Kira’s statue behind the bleachers and decides to read up on mermaids yet again in the bestiary to see if there’s anything useful. There isn’t. She pointedly doesn’t look up when Derek arrives and leans broodily on the pole across from her. Finally, she hears the roar of Scott’s bike and springs into business mode. “Do you know how it works?”

“Not really,” Scott replies as Lydia hands him the totem. He twirls it between his fingers, studying the way it reflects in the moonlight. “Deaton wasn’t the most forthcoming about that.” Derek snorts.

Scott walks up to his unmoving fiancée and places the totem in her outstretched hand. Nothing happens. “Maybe she needs moonlight.” When Liam and Mason arrive, their partners in tow, Scott instructs his betas to move Kira to the center of the field. Kira is shinier, but that’s about all that changes.

While they wait for something to happen, Lydia informs the pack of Stiles’s ridiculous stunt and the current state of affairs. It takes a pleading look from Scott for Derek to divulge what he knows about turned merpeople. “I’ve never personally met a merperson on land before, but I’ve heard it can be done. Stiles will probably be chronically thirsty and feel the pull of the ocean to about the same degree as the rest of us.”

“Because the moon drives the tide, right?”

He shrugs. “It would make sense.”

“Would she control the shift or would it kick in automatically in the water? I doubt it would be evolutionarily effective for her to be able to shift on land.”

“I don’t know, Lydia,” he responds with exasperation. “I’m not an expert in sea creatures, or Stiles for that matter. Why don’t you just have her ask her new lake friends?”

Lydia rolls her eyes and turns her attention to Scott. “We are going to have to go back there eventually, you know. Do we have a plan yet?”

“I’m working on it,” Scott assures. “Stiles might actually be our best bet for this one. Now that she’s a mermaid maybe they’ll be more willing to work with us.”

Lydia is highly skeptical but she keeps her opinion to herself. (Derek doesn’t: they’re all screwed. For once they agree on something.) After about a half-hour, Kira is still inanimate and Lydia is losing her patience. She has to get back to Stiles and figure out their next move. A cloud begins to move in front of the lower half of the moon, which gives her an idea.

“Hey, Scott!” she calls as she heads toward centerfield. “Didn’t the witch say something about thunder kitsune before she froze Kira?”

“Yeah, why? You think this has something to do with her powers?”

“Well she is a solid metal rod, right now. That can’t be a coincidence.” Scott grins at her and instructs everyone to step away from the statue.

“Kira,” he intones softly, “I don’t know if you can hear me in there, but if you can, try to make a current.” He steps back as well and looks to the sky as the clouds darken. The wolves start to tense at the change in pressure. A few flashes of heat lightning dance through the clouds before a bolt strikes the statue with a deafening pop. The pack looks to the epicenter to find Kira standing there, holding the totem weakly in her palm. Scott rushes to her and soothingly pulls her to the ground, the clouds above them dissipating.

~~~

The totem sits in Lydia’s lap as she drives back to her house. She has a feeling Stiles will need it to get the bracelet back.

_“She’s upstairs,” the Sheriff ushered when Lydia arrived at the Stilinski residence. Her friend’s bedroom was in more disarray than usual, a breathing mass of blankets the only indication she was even there._

_“Stiles,” she tried. The pile didn’t respond. “Do you wanna come out of there?”_

_“No,” was the muffled reply._

_“Should I cuddle you in your blanket burrito instead?” The pile hesitated before throwing open a flap for Lydia to join her. She had very little experience being big spoon, but she drew the sniffling girl into her arms and placed her chin on her shoulder. They stayed like that for a while before Stiles finally started speaking._

_“We broke up,” she choked out._

_“I heard,” Lydia murmured. “Do I kill him or just kick his ass?”_

_She grinned wanly. “Totally mundane break-up, a stern glare will do. He just ‘doesn’t want to hurt me’ or whatever.”_

_“Yep, that sounds like the kind of self-sacrificing martyr bullshit Derek would pull.” A mirthless laugh escaped as Stiles sat up in the bed._

_“I just don’t get why now of all times. Like, he stuck around when I came out, he stuck around when I died a second time, hell he was still friends with me when I was running around killing people because of a thousand-year-old fox. What gives?”_

_“I mean let’s be real here, Derek has a lot of issues he hasn’t worked out quite yet. And I think we both know it’s going to take more than a few years of relative quiet to get him to start healing. Besides, given his relationship history? I think you’re much more useful to him as a friend right now.”_

_“What would I do without you?” Stiles asked as she cuddled in closer, and Lydia couldn’t help but smile. She picked her purse up from beside the bed and rummaged around for the package she came to deliver._

_“I may or may not have gotten you something to cheer you up.” Stiles gave her a confused smile as she accepted the box and opened it._

_“Wow, it’s beautiful,” she whispered. She removed the bracelet and studied it reverently. The brush of Stiles’s long fingers along the alternating pieces of pearl and rose quartz held Lydia enthralled. “Thank you,” Stiles breathed, wide eyes full of surprise and hope. It took all of Lydia’s resolve not to kiss her right there. Stiles pulled her in tight, breath shaky in her ear._

_”Of course,” Lydia responded. “I firmly believe pretty girls deserve pretty things.”_

_Stiles leaned a tired head on her shoulder. They stayed like that for hours in comfortable silence. It was the happiest Lydia had been for a while._

~~~

“Come in,” Stiles answers to the soft knock on the bathroom door. Lydia appears to have calmed down since the last time she was in here. She places the totem back on the counter and crouches in front of Stiles’s temporary new home. “How’d it go?”

“Kira’s back to normal. Derek seems to think you can shift, although given it’s your first shift and it’s a full moon, you’re probably stuck in here tonight.”

“Yay,” she groans. “Can we at least change my water? I think I can taste the oxygen depleting.”

“Right, sorry.” Lydia pulls up the drain and throws open the spigot. “We should probably leave it running overnight so you don’t drown on me.” Stiles grabs her hand, intertwining her fingers with her girlfriend’s as much as her new webbing allows.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” she mumbles. Lydia lowers herself into a soft kiss. Her hand tries to find purchase Stiles’s hair, but she breaks the kiss off suddenly with an “EWWW!” She wipes her hand on a towel as Stiles starts laughing. “Yeah, that takes a little getting used to.” She flips her fin appreciatively. “However, it does do wonders for my dysphoria.”

Lydia gives her a look she can’t decipher. “Stiles, you know I love you, right? I know I can’t magically fix your dysphoria, but in case you need to hear it, you never have to hide from me. Whether you have a fin or legs, whether or not you have curves or big breasts or anything else other people think makes you a woman, you’re still my amazing, stubborn, sarcastic, ingenious, beautiful girlfriend, and no part of your body is going to convince me otherwise.”

Stiles stares in awe at the woman before her, eyes threatening to release happy tears. “I… I wasn’t sure you’d get it. Part of me was afraid you saw me as another boyfriend.”

“Well I don’t,” Lydia replies with finality. She kisses her again, slow and steady. Stiles shifts to get in a better position, bracing herself on the bottom of the tub. After a minute or so, she opens her eyes and removes her lips from Lydia’s. Something’s off.

“Lydia, are my gills gone?”

“Yeah,” she says with a confused frown. They both look down to Stiles’s fading tail. Stiles laughs.

“Looks like I found my anchor.”

Lydia kisses her quick and gets up. “I’m proud of you, Stiles. Get dressed and I’ll bring you some water. Derek says you’ll get dehydrated faster than you used to.”

“I’m pretty sure my clothes are still wet.”

“Well you’ll just have to wear some of mine then,” Lydia winks.

When her legs have fully separated, Stiles flops out of the tub with a graceless thud. She stands up and towels off before examining her wounds in the mirror. All of them have faded except a crescent-shaped scar on the back of her leg. It shimmers the same as the totem on the counter. She smiles at its reflection and crosses the hall into Lydia’s bedroom, where a night shirt and matching shorts have already been lined up.

Lydia comes upstairs to find her settled into her bed. “Now this is a sight.” She puts her iTunes on shuffle and sits down at her vanity. “What do you say we make this a real girls’ night?”

“What, with makeovers and everything?”

“Duh! Although probably without the gossiping about cute boys. I like to think you only have eyes for me.”

Stiles smiles and slowly reaches for the pillow behind her. “You know what that means though, right?”

Lydia looks at her with a cautious smile. “What?”

“PILLOW FIGHT!” Stiles yells as she launches a pillow at Lydia’s head. Luckily she catches it before it knocks everything off the vanity. That could have easily resulted in Stiles losing her head.

“Damn it, Stiles!” Lydia screeches as she dives on her girlfriend and hits her with the pillow that just attacked her. The two begin pummeling each other, squeals of laughter echoing through the room. Lydia manages to get Stiles pinned down and they both still, giggles dying down as Lydia claims her lips.

Lydia’s kiss is soft, tentative, as if she’s afraid she’ll evaporate at the slightest pressure. If she had to guess, that’s a real fear of Lydia’s right now. Stiles opens her mouth and wills her tongue to convey all the words she wishes she were brave enough to speak aloud. All the fear and sorrow and regret, but most definitely the unshakeable love she feels for her remarkable girlfriend.

Lydia removes her blouse and begins to worship Stiles’s neck. Unsure what to do with her hands, Stiles buries them in Lydia’s strawberry blonde curls, which elicits an excited moan from above her. The pressure in her groin is building, so she tilts her hips away from Lydia to prevent a scene Stiles is unprepared to act out just yet.

“Do you want to keep going?” Lydia questions breathlessly.

“Y…yeah,” is her nervous reply. “But maybe we could just focus on you tonight? If that’s okay?”

Lydia sits up and places a hand on Stiles’s cheek. “Of course, sweetie. If you ever decide you want me to return the favor, just let me know.” Stiles leans up and kisses her gratefully. “Until then, get to eating.”

“Yes ma’am!” Stiles snorts. She flips them around and makes quick work of discarding Lydia’s bra. She starts kissing her way down her body, eventually lavishing her nipples with reverent flicks of her tongue. A slow gasp and a hand in her hair indicate she’s doing a good job. She runs her palm up Lydia’s impeccably smooth thigh and carefully removes her panties from under her skirt. She releases her breasts and sits up to guide the burgundy fabric off her legs. Settling in at the foot of the bed, Stiles peppers kisses up her thigh before mouthing at her vulva.

“Good girl,” Lydia moans, bucking gently into the touch. Stiles traces circles around her dampening clit with her tongue. Lydia starts to pant nonsense syllables as Stiles continues her ministrations. “Try a finger,” Lydia instructs, and she’s all too eager to comply. It takes a little coordination to do both motions simultaneously, but Stiles manages to establish a rhythm that has Lydia frantically gripping the sheets. Lydia comes with a long rush of air and a firm press of her groin into Stiles’s face. Stiles slows down and works on extracting herself while Lydia comes down, a peaceful smile gracing her lips.

“Do you mind if I go take care of this?” Stiles gestures awkwardly. Lydia nods with tired amusement. Stiles locks herself in the bathroom and wastes no time taking care of business. When she’s finished she cleans herself up and stares at her reflection, wild hair and numerous hickies a welcome sight. The mile-wide grin on her face doesn’t fade as she exits the bathroom and rejoins Lydia on the bed. Lydia has taken the opportunity to change into pajamas and wipe off the remainder of her make-up. She begins brushing Stiles’s hair and drawing it into a braid before they do their nails and pop in a cheesy rom-com that ends with them making out more than the protagonists. Finally exhausted by the ridiculous day they’ve had, they cuddle in next to each other on Lydia’s bed and quickly fall asleep.

~~~

The next day, Stiles leads the rest of the pack to the lake’s edge. Banshees are immune to the song of the sirens, as is Stiles now, but she makes sure the others are well-protected from any harm. They’ll need to engineer a better solution later so that they don’t have to completely cut off their hearing every time they come near a merperson, but this will do for now. The pack stops about thirty feet from the shore while Lydia and Stiles walk to the water’s edge.

“If anything happens,” Lydia says for maybe the third time today, “just scream and I’ll hear you.” She’s made her opinions about this plan very clear, but they have very little choice at this point. They need to smooth things over with the sirens, not to mention finding out how to navigate Stiles’s new species. At least this time the pack is prepared to back her up.

“I will,” Stiles assures her, kissing her temple. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” She hands Lydia the totem from her pocket and begins undressing. Lydia unfolds the towel she’s been carrying as her pants drop; no one but the banshee gets to see her naked. The pack wastes no time catcalling her, which elicits a middle finger from both women. “You’re all assholes!”

Lydia hands the totem back to Stiles and kisses her cheek. “Good luck,” she whispers.

“Back in a flash,” she grins. She slowly submerges her body in the ice-cold water and wills herself to shift. It takes a minute or two, but eventually she feels the familiar itching and tests out her modified appendages. Satisfied that she’s more or less got the hang of swimming with her new tail, she sets off for the lair of the merpeople. At the gates, a contingent of armed mermen swim out to intercept her. It’s then she realizes her vocal cords don’t work underwater. Well shit.

She pulls up short and puts up her hands. The mermen surround her, spears pointed menacingly at her in wait for an order from their leader. She sees a crowned mermaid come through the gates, triton in hand. She speaks without moving her lips, and Stiles can hear her clearly but it’s not a language she knows. She wishes she could answer back but she’s not even quite sure how the queen did it herself so she just stares at her with wide eyes and holds the totem out in front of her.

The queen looks at her with slight confusion and speaks again. Stiles looks around at the other faces watching her and finds nothing in their expressions to indicate what exactly she’s supposed to do right now. Suddenly the queen seems to understand her predicament and says something that must have been to the guards, because they part before her and indicate she should swim through the gates. She takes the hint, the guards close behind her and the queen to her right.

The queen guides her to the pedestal, and Stiles sees that the bracelet is still where she left it. She relaxes her shoulders in relief at the sight. She swims up to it and replaces the bracelet with the totem, the pedestal glowing briefly in apparent satisfaction. It fits a little looser on her wrist than usual, probably due to the change in gravity. The queen once again ushers her forward. She considers making a break for it, but she isn’t too keen on trying to outswim her guards a second time. Reluctantly, she follows her back through the gates of the kingdom and towards the shore.

Stiles flails in panic and tries everything she can think of to communicate her discomfort to the queen. There’s no telling what the queen will do if she surfaces, and Stiles cannot be responsible for the death of her pack. Not again. Undeterred, the queen and her guards continue to corral her to shore. ‘Scream, Stiles,’ she wills her uncooperative body, ‘scream!!’

A sound startles her. After a moment, she realizes it came from her own body. The guards halt and the queen turns to look at her, a reserved pride evident in her face. The queen speaks, and while her words are as unintelligible as ever, something tells Stiles that her tone is calming. The queen reaches out her palm in front of Stiles. Her instincts kick in and she places her palm against the queen’s.

In a flash, images flood her brain of mercestors and deep seas and Stiles’s arrival and extreme anger but an overall sense of “trust me”. Stiles yanks her hand back. Her head is spinning but she follows the queen to shore. Stiles surfaces first, her lungs opening once again. The cheers of the pack greet her with the frigid air.

“Everyone stay back. The queen is going to come up with me. Don’t attack her!”

“Wait, what?”

“Stiles!”

Stiles resubmerges herself and indicates that it’s safe for the queen to surface with her. She pops her head back above water in time to watch the queen shift seamlessly into human form. Her regal turquoise hair falls to her waist and frames her angular face, taupe skin glistening in the sunlight. Scott steps forward calmly to stand before her, earplugs clutched tight in his fist. “I am Alpha McCall. Stiles is under my protection.”

“You may call me Queen Momi. Stiles informs me you have taken over this territory from the Hales, which means you also take over their treaties.” She did? Momi must have read her brain too during their mind meld. “Care to inform me why you invaded our lake?”

“Told you not to do it,” Derek mutters, not very quietly.

“We meant no harm,” Scott assures her. “I didn’t even know Stiles had done it until after it happened. We needed to save my fiancée from—“

“I’m aware of the gist of what happened. If you had just asked, we would have been happy to assist you.” The pack glares at Stiles.

“Okay, so maybe I acted a little recklessly.” Lydia rolls her eyes as she helps her out of the lake.

“What you did was gravely serious,” Momi warns, “however you were able to elude my guards and are now a merperson, which has me intrigued.” She turns to face Scott. “I offer the following punishment as an alternative to destroying your town. Stiles leaves the pack and joins my school. I will train her and help her hone her new abilities and in return she will serve my people in our realm.”

Shit. Stiles turns to see the horrified look on her girlfriend’s face that probably mirrors her own. This is bad. She can’t leave the pack that has gotten her through every trial and tribulation the universe could throw at her. This is her family.

Scott has deployed his alpha eyes when she directs her attention to him. “That is not an option.”

“It’s your only option, Alpha McCall,” Momi quips. “Considering the circumstances, it is more than generous.”

“Is she allowed to leave?” Stiles hears from the shaking girl beside her. Tears trail down Lydia’s cheeks, tears that are 100% Stiles’s fault.

Momi considers her question, aquamarine eyes piercing Stiles with their searching vigor. “She may walk among you on the full moon only, unless you ask me specifically for an exception. And I am not easy to convince.”

“Do I get to say goodbye?”

Momi turns and begins the shift back to her mer form. “You have until sundown tomorrow to return to our realm. Otherwise prepare for war.”

~~~

When Lydia finishes unpacking the last of the boxes, she changes into her bikini and heads down to the lake house’s pier. She hasn’t seen Stiles for a week, and it hurts being cut off from her for so long. But Stiles was confident this plan would work. “She never said _you_ couldn’t visit _me_ ,” Stiles had pointed out, eyebrows waggling significantly. Lydia drops the buoy in the water and turns on the emitter before lying down on the pier with a book. It’s difficult to focus on the words with all the thoughts racing through her mind, but she forces herself to relax and concentrate on the history of mermaids Derek had lying around. About an hour later, she sees ripples approaching, and soon a familiar tail is visible through the clear water. She puts down her book and sits excitedly on the edge of the pier.

The beaming smile on Stiles’s face is more than worth the wait. “Yes! It worked!” Lydia squeals.

Stiles pulls herself onto the dock and sits dripping next to her girlfriend. They share a week’s worth of kisses in one fervent rush of tongues and lips. Suddenly they’re falling. Lydia gasps in a breath just before she hits the water. When she surfaces, she can hear Stiles cackle. The little shit threw them in.

“You’re dead, Stilinski!” She chases the mermaid around before climbing on her back and demanding a mermaid ride. She feels like a bull rider with the undulating motion beneath her, and the dolphin clicks of laughter from Stiles just add an extra element of ridiculous to the entire situation. And if she had to rank them, this would probably be her favorite date they’ve ever had. She knows it’s not going to be easy-- things rarely are in their world. But if Stiles and Lydia have any one thing in common, it’s that they always figure it out.


End file.
